


Breathe

by IraDeu



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Confessions, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, John-centric, M/M, i'll probably end up shoving more tags on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 20:22:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9674600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IraDeu/pseuds/IraDeu
Summary: John panics.





	

**Author's Note:**

> You could, if you wished to, think of this as sort of a spiritual successor to Concentric Circles.

John is pinned against the wall, now, and he can feel the little rings of Sherlock's fingers pressing down on his shoulders, chest, arms, contact point fingertips like concentric circles or the aftershock of an earthquake or ripples in the ocean, and John becomes aware of the fact that he cannot move. His hair and clothing feel scratchy. His lungs will not expand. Cannot. Breathe. 

He is trapped. 

(This is not a surprise, in theory. The switch from chaser to chasee is not uncommon, and John has deliberately been put in more compromising positions, if not by this man, or in this lifetime, or without regret. The specifics can be adapted to fit the archetype and the entire world can be brought down, forced into sense, with a little bit of time. The world is ending. You are a shame. Sherlock is-) 

No.  

If you go down that path, John, you will die. 

So he does not, and he blinks and the part of John's brain that has been trained for combat, to survive, begins to hum awake. A sense of fear begins to feather at the ends of him, like he's fraying away, the sort of pressing _you are not safe_  that doesn't let you forget it, the sort of thing that haunts women walking home alone at night. Omnipresent and there and overwhelming. You are a cornered animal. To assume otherwise shall be your doom.  

(This isn't good. John's mind is becoming floating and humlike, and the world is slowing, as if John was suspended in honey. John remembers like this. Like this, he is not nice. Nice is important, he believes. Ergo, this is not good. Wake yourself up. Don't fall. 

Breathe.) 

Nature versus nurture, and John is the battleground. Remember the last time this happened, the last time you let your emotions rule you? The rule is to placate, so that you don't have to lash out like this. Contain yourself. You were in Afghanistan, and you got to witness _how_  many deaths because you were too afraid to- 

Fine, then, John thinks. You're going to do this. 

The gears in John's head started to clatter their way into motion, and everything was wiped away. The world was reduced to variables. Necessary information. Lines. 

John needed: the position of their bodies, the wall, nearby weapons. He saw this, glowing, as if outlines and movements were trailed with ribbon, or blood, pinging back. 

What are the possible outcomes of this situation? His thoughts roll off like mechanical, going down the line, step by step. There is a method by which you can stave off death, John, and you would be a fool to not use it. Remember Harry? Remember? 

(She had a choice. You do not. She died to save herself. You are alive, now, because you are _afraid_ -) 

One. You are being attacked. You have been caught and strung in a manner that will allow your death to be sterile and efficient, like slaughtering cattle, bodies strung up for the slaughter. Imagine your blood, slipping over fingers onto raining London cobblestones. They would not find your body, and you would not be missed. 

Two. You are being hidden. You have been dragged as if by a cat into some terrible scheme wherein you will either function as bait or must not. Either way, you are a pawn and an affectation. You do not matter except as an object, and this will leech you out until you are nothing but dust. You wish to be alive, and you wish to live. These two things are mutually exclusive, even if you do not know it. Sherlock Holmes will lead to your death. Pick how. 

Three. You are about to be raped in the sort of brutal way that you thought only happened to other people, the way that makes people an example, the sort of crime that will mar you forever as a victim, the sort of pain that people don't take seriously and can't explain and hurts so badly you drown, the kind of thing that will inevitably become how you define yourself because that is how others will define you. It's not their fault - it's the sort of thing that people don't understand, so they make it other, and therefore manageable. Remember Harry? Remember her _friends_? (This is the first one in the sequence that doesn't feel real. Like water. His head swims. Death, at least, has become comprehensible to John. Shouldn't have told him. Shouldn't have told him.) Is it right? Sort of. 

Four. Sherlock has deemed that you are the object of his affection, and now romanticist social mores dictate that he is obligated to confess in some dramatic way. A kiss, maybe. John doesn't know. He's never been asked. Never had the time to think about this, about settling down, you see. The language of romanticism is not a natural one. Soul mates and kisses and marriage don't feel natural, not to him, not to the outsider, and if there is no scaffolding left, there is nothing left to build on. Bricks without structure. They do not know what to do, with their emotions. The world is ending. John is an object, made to serve the function that Sherlock needs, moving forward to fulfill biological psychological imperatives and then go, become gone. He shifts, and his hair grinds against concrete. _Do you want this? Do you love me?_  I don't know. Give me time. Give me space to run, and I'll see if I take it. 

Five. John's missed something. Something important, like a smoking gun or a bleeding out, and John has now managed to err so impressively that Sherlock has resorted to violence. John knows that it is John's job to never notice things - but doubly knows that Sherlock is never violent. Not for things like this. This is a deviation from the script. 

An anomaly, then. The first. Unexpected and improbable. 

Breathe. John can feel his lungs trying to expand against vibration, like closing something that's exploding, expanding, rumbling. Tumble. Shake. Minds were not meant to move this fast. How does Sherlock do this, all the time? 

The reason, Irene had told him, that most people are of average intelligence - she ground her cigarette, here, into the ashtray Sherlock had stolen, marring crystal sentimentality with little stains of _her_ \- is that if we were any smarter, we, as a species, would have killed ourselves. 

She is dead now. So are many others. This is what they were fighting. This is why John is here, trapped. Choking. Drowning. 

The little moments of clarity are like reminders. Wake-up calls. Perspective. (And they are too rare - John prefers inward-bound pain better than what he has the capacity to inflict. Than what he has inflicted, and Sherlock is looking at his hands and _flinches_ -) 

So. What do you do, John? 

Sherlock's nails feel like they're rusted and scratching and pointed. Crucifixion. Stigmata. John's head feels light, like half of it has been replaced with air, or maybe nothing. Like a partial vacuum, and his mind has spread out to cancel the lack of pressure. Or not- maybe his brain has collapsed in, formed new fractals. There is a correct answer here, a psychological rule that states exactly what John's mind has begun to do, and John does not know it. This is not a feeling related to Afghanistan; this is here and now. You have never felt this way before and never will again.

Do you have any options? Do you like them? (Did you not abdicate them, the moment you walked into 221B? Is this what love is, to you? Is it the abandoning of your freedoms, the gift of your body and mind and heart, or is it something else? What do you want? Who did you learn to want from? Her?)

John has to get away. From... from everything. This can't go on. Like a trapped horse, in a pen, or a bird within a cage. Do you remember, back when you stitched people back together in Afghanistan? Now what do you do? 

Somewhere far away, someone with a deep voice is saying _calm down_. Like that - John can see the emphasis, the urgency, the italics. It sounds like humming underwater, like a radio almost tuned and a mouth filled with static, spilling out like toothpaste on a broken mirror. 

It sounds like being drowned. Do you have any idea what's about to happen to me? I'll calm down when I'm dead. 

John is not a large person. But he has muscle and skill and desperation, and Sherlock does not try to fight back, and John lashes out, and they have done this a thousand times before and Sherlock does what he has always done: tolerate. 

This is mildly unexpected. You cannot chase unless the other runs. He stops, because there is no point. Sherlock has him, and whyever he does is important enough to tolerate pain. (They are both so lonely, John thinks, and this terrifies him.) 

It was always like this, wasn't it, something whispers. You'd put up with him, so he'd put up with you. You know the worst of each other, and this is something more intimate than sex or death or God could ever approach. 

No. No. That's not it. Think about the things you like, maybe, or find a way to carve yourself back into anger. Anything but this. You can't tolerate vacillating. His smile, maybe, or the way that he's always so kind to those that need it, the way he will change himself to be good. 

No. That's not it either. What about _him_  do you like? 

John tries to think about dedication and intensity and falling and love, and does not think about whether or not this is the wrong question. 

(What do you want? she had asked, eyes full and glowing and blue. 

I don't know, he had said, and both of them had known that was a lie but neither had said anything because _I want to be good enough and have enough and not be scared and be loved and to not be scared / dependent / self-loathing and I do not deserve any of that and my identity goes and comes with the tide, as if something was washed away, as if waiting for a hurricane_  felt like it would be too much of the truth. More intimacy than he was trained to handle.  

My parents would hit her, he wanted to say. They would hit her, and I would watch. 

I cannot be like her. Let me lose myself in you. Let me put on a mask and hide who I am so I can be good enough to deserve to exist. Please. Please marry me, your gay boyfriend that tries so hard to be enough. I think I hate myself enough to force a change. Do you want romance? Love? Connection? I will lie for you so well you will never be able to tell. I am a soldier and a doctor. I specialize in killing to sustain anyone that pays, or in life and death and bringing it, or anything else you want this dichotomy to be. 

She said no.) 

Stars flutter in front of his eyes, like pinpricks of light. Like someone's poked holes in a thick black wool coat. John can feel the scratchiness, the uncomfortable warmth. His breathing speeds up, then slows, then speeds up again - harmonic motion. Not deep enough. His lungs cannot fill themselves. Air is leaking out, maybe. John thinks he can hear the hiss of oxygen escaping. A pressurized container. Osmosis. It occurs for the first time to him, here, that he may not be entirely well, and this sends another jolt of paranoia down his spine. You have been compromised. Watch. 

Sherlock grabs the back of John's neck. 

John's heart stops momentarily. This is not expected. A deviation from the norm. 

It takes him by surprise, so that there's a gap of about a second in which John can process what happened without thinking, and, in this second, John thinks _please_. 

(That's when it comes to him, the _why_. What John has fallen in love with is the way that Sherlock finds that there is no choice but to turn his pain into something that can save people, and John thinks that that just about has to be the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. The way that Sherlock, when confronted with darkness, chooses to create light. This is what happens as John is bleeding out in a filthy London alleyway, high on adrenaline and fear, strung up, wired.) 

And then reality wakes up, like a beast that never sleeps. This is not good, it says. A fear of being controlled thrums through like madness, and every part of his memories and instincts are telling him that he is under attack, that he shall not survive this, and are telling him to move fight run kill hide get away from here you will _die_  and nothing scares you more than what you know is inevitable, the crash and burn and breakup and do you fear Hell, my child, because it is coming for you. Confess your sins or try to run. You are at my mercy, and you do not deserve it. There is no time left for you to waste on false promises that hurt more, in the end, than false despair. 

Imagine a gun, held under your chin. Imagine the end to this, to having to force your way out of bed. Imagine an end to your lack of hope. This is the only way. You have been told that things will get better, and you will only be free if you learn to stop clinging. Green carnations. Violets, dripped with bullet holes. 

What do you want to be, something asks. And what are you willing to do to take it? 

I want to be someone, John thinks, and I don't know if I'll do anything. I am scared, and I have terrible habits. But let me free and I will try. Identities like apples. Forbidden. Enticing. The beginning, or maybe the end, and John is still a child in his bedroom, trying not to listen. 

He wants to move. He cannot move. His eyes are closed. He sees everything. 

Sherlock's hand feels wet and warm and thick, like rain, maybe, until John realizes that rain doesn't dry and flake off at the edges and that it isn't raining. John feels like he is shaking, and that little bits of pressure, like screws, maybe, are holding him together. Precarious and gentle. Like art on display, or holding a puzzle, or carrying a child. Something fragile and dangerous and beautiful and _hurts_. 

Sherlock's voice snaps into focus, like a camera, like a conductor of light. "John, you- you are not allowed to _die_ , you are not allowed to _leave_  me and I am _sorry_ -" 

John makes a noise that he hopes is non-committal. What he meant to say was "Stop killing me, then, you got your once," or maybe "stop lying, we both thought you weren't like the rest" or "if I gave you the opportunity to save me what would you do? What _could_  you do? Have you ever tried to save someone that didn't want to be saved?" 

Don't answer that last one. I know the answer. 

He figures what he's said is close enough, for now, because he feels... 

Something new, he guesses, because the words don't come. They'll find their way home. They're like dogs. 

"John, are you okay? Talk to me. John, please. I - I can't survive without you, I can't do what you do-" 

Now John can feel the blood. It's spreading around the back of the wall and his sweater and his neck, and John can feel the adrenaline sweeping out with it. An anchor. Floating back down. "I... I'm okay. I don't know what got into me." 

Shit. It sounds as rehearsed as it is. Intimacy, methodically destroyed. 

"You do." 

And that's just about perfect. The cutting clip of deductions: Sherlock cannot help but shine is laser bright on everything he sees. His sleeve is pressing hard into that spot at the base of John's neck, the part where (John tries hard not to think of these things) and John realizes that it is to staunch blood, and new memories are flowing and crashing into old ones so that John cannot tell the difference (has this scene played out before? he doesn't remember) and all John can think is _his coat, his coats, his coat-_  

"Are you... Sherlock, is it always like this?" That's not what he means. What he means is _help._  

"I wouldn't know." It feels partly like Sherlock's trying, like he's just as lost, and partly like an assertion that they are not the same. 

"I..." 

Sherlock pulls John closer, gently, into his chest, and says, "You'll be fine. Breathe." 

John does not say, "No, I won't." John does not say anything about how both of their lives have gone directly to Hell, about how nothing is okay. 

John just breathes. In, out.  

"Do you think you'll be able to walk home?" John can feel the buzzing in Sherlock's ribcage, low and dark in a way he knows ought to be threatening but just feels warm. Or maybe he's just cold - he can feel something bright and hot seeping out of him, out of his neck. The image of a tiny vampire is put in his mind, and he has the urge to laugh. 

Breathe. (He told you to, so it must be important. He's here. He's now.) "Yes, if you..." 

Sherlock nods and shifts John so that John can hobble forward, and John grabs his arms like they're railings. John thinks this happened, because he does not have a recollection of it. John merely watched. 

John also watched two men hobbling home together on a Saturday night, trying to avoid streetlamps and traffic. The tall man shouted at someone, once, and the short man tried not to fall and mostly succeeded. Blood drip-drip-dripped behind them, like stones to the middle of the woods. 

They stopped, once. John watched the short man sit down and try to cling on. John also watched the tall man cry. 

He did not connect this to himself until later, until he skipped forward, lost time, and now the tall man is fiddling with the keys and saying something to his landlady to _let us in let us in they're coming_ , and the door is open and the short man tries not to struggle up the stairs and the landlady watches, afraid. Canto two. She has seen this happen before. 

It clicked when John was sitting on the couch, blankets burying him, bandages wrapped around his neck, Sherlock making calls to 999 that didn't go through and bullet holes whizzing through the windows of people that might once have not been strangers. Ms Hudson is watching Rosie, and Rosie is asleep. 

John doesn't know why. Fear, maybe, or maybe too much mental energy spent in one place, and is now lying in a place with no more stairs with a pressure on his neck and Sherlock perched and worried on a chair, watching. Sherlock would take care of him. 

It occurs to him that there is a case, somewhere. Something that Sherlock could be, instead of this. It occurs to him to apologize. 

"I'm sorry, Sherlock, I didn't-" 

"Don't. You do the same for me." 

Another gunshot. A part of John panics at this, but this part is too tired. This part of John has been awake for days straight, and does not have time left to worry. A parasite, subdued, silenced, or maybe just drowned out. 

There's a pause here, like dropping molten glass into water. (Sherlock told him, once, that this creates a teardrop-shaped piece of glass that can be shot at one end and will shatter if you breathe on the other end. John does not remember for what, only that it happened, and the look on Sherlock's face as he told him.) 

John closes his eyes and does not ask and tries to sleep, and he is warm. 

It lasts for about ten minutes, in which John's mind starts to flicker in and out of lucidity, like a candle. John does not think about what has happened. John does not choose to think about the end of the world. John does not know why he has been spared. John does not know what he has done to deserve mercy. Sherlock is an enigma, and Sherlock is currently fascinated with John, even as the rest of the world is slowly fading away, out. _You could have been anywhere. Even Mycroft left, once things got bad, but you stayed. You stayed, even after Molly was found, even after Irene was arrested. You and I keep on trying to save the world even after both of us know that it is doomed._

Please, John thinks, instead. Tell me why. 

Sherlock hears, and deigns to speak.  

He starts slowly. "Because," he says, and his voice creaks a little like he's scared or out of practiced or incompetent, as if he wants to back out and knows he can't, "you know how to continue on, even when the entire world is telling you to not. Because the world has broken you, and yet you survive what would have destroyed anyone else. And you haven't let yourself be destroyed yet. And...

"I am irrepressible, and you are indestructible. And there is a solemn sort of beauty in that, in being able to go on and not be diluted. You are hidden, but you are _there_ , and I can see you in the way you stood up to Mycroft or every time you fight back when they were expecting you to bite your tongue or in every time you talk about us on your blog and you use a word that even I don't know. And they have destroyed you and your heart keeps beating, and I will dig it out of you." 

John realizes that he is not breathing, and that Sherlock knows that he is awake. 

He does not move. 

Here, he thinks, is the most intimate moment of your entire life. Here is Sherlock at the most vulnerable you have ever seen him, and all he wants you to do is to be happy and yourself and alive. And if you do not know him, even if you did not feel some sort of connection with him, here is a man that will force one into you. 

Look, he thinks. Here's someone that cares. 

And that's enough. 

He closes his eyes. He will wake up to a world that no longer can be saved, and he will be content. 

**Author's Note:**

> There is a very good chance that the title will change.


End file.
